Day of the Marsicorns
by froodlemonkey
Summary: As far as Dash is aware, Grungey Bill is still haunting a two-slice toaster safely locked away in the evidence locker...


As far as Dash is aware, Grungey Bill is still haunting a two-slice toaster safely locked away in the evidence locker. At one point, Marshall had offered the toaster to Dash, who had let him know in no uncertain terms how utterly useless a toaster was when your entire supply of electricity came from a car battery and jumper cables. Phrases like "no power points", "fried circuits" and "you idiot" had been thrown around, and Marshall had gotten very huffy and gone off in a mood, taking his stupid haunted toaster with him.

So, when Dash wakes in the middle of the night to a succession of soft impacts on the rickety wooden floor above him, he knows it isn't the ghost of the worst bank robber east of the Mississippi tearing up the old mill in the search for his gun.

The staircase is rotted through in several places, but enough of the steps remain intact for him to creep up them to the second floor to see who's invaded his home this time. If it's Teller, he's going over the balcony. His sidekick will, maybe, get a pass.

It's not Mars, and it isn't Simon, either. It's a silver-blue portal hanging in midair about five feet off the dusty floorboards, and discharging what looks like a dozen soft toys onto the ground in front of it every few seconds. Already the mound of dolls has grown to the point where several small collapses have occured on it's slopes. This must have been what woke him; a few of the toys have already spilled over the second floor platform and tumbled off the balcony or down the staircase.

Dash nudges one tentatively with his foot, and when it doesn't try to attack him, picks it up.

It's then that he starts laughing. It's been almost a year since the Incident at Lake Eerie, and every full moon, he'd found a plausible excuse to get up to the Secret Spot just aso he can point and laugh and, yes, occaisonally throw things at Mars when he makes his monthly transformation. Last time it was fruity pebbles; they got stuck in his multi-coloured mane and when he turned back, Simon had had to cut the cereal out of his hair because it had gotten so tangled. He'd been trying to ping them off the end of Marshall's horn, but he was laughing too hard and it spoiled his aim.

Now, here is the universe delivering him further ammunition in the form of adorable stuffed Marsicorns, complete with rainbow hair and gold hooves and a key stitched onto their flanks, and thick brown sideburns that don't go at all with the rest of the picture. He tucks the Marsicorn safely in the inner pocket of his long black coat, and goes out to find Teller.

Simon is outside the World o' Stuff, spinning on a giant wooden wheel. He smiles and waves and nearly loses his balance as he does so, but catches himself in time.

"Where's your partner?" asks Dash. He's smirking, he can feel it, the sort of smirk that will grown into a full-blown evil grin and give the whole game away if he's not careful.

"He's still not speaking to you," says Simon. "A chunk of his hair grew back funny and Syndi started teasing him and, well, now he's grounded. Also, he has a black eye."

Dash assumes an air of mock-innocence and feigned hurt. "I was trying to help him," he says. "For science, and all that other crap. I wanted to see if the fruity pebbles would turn into gold if they touched a unicorn horn."

"That was never a story," says Simon.

"It might have been, though," says Dash, but his smirk has become a grin and quickly turns into a snigger. It doesn't help that Simon is clearly trying to maintain his air of loyal disapproval through a smile of his own. He looks around, checking the coast is clear of tempermental teenaged werewolf-unicorn-hybrids, and laughs alongside Dash.

"That was really mean," he says, when they both calm down. "You shouldn't do that."

"He shouldn't videotape strangers dancing," said Dash. "If they were human girls, his family would have had to leave town." Simon looks blank, and Dash is forced to remind himself again of how very young Teller's sidekick really is.

"Look," he says, changing the subject. "Look what showed up at the mill this morning." He pulls the Marsicorn out of his pocket and waves it at Simon.

Simon's face immediately lights up. "Awwww, he's adorable!" he cries, reaching out. "Can I play with him?"

"Nope," says Dash, pulling it back. "I need it for an important mission. You're going to help me figure out how to get all of these into the Teller house without anyone noticing, and hide them everywhere."

"Are there more?" asked Simon excitedly, then, "Wait, what? No! Dash, no, you can't, that's really... that's so mean!"

Dash holds the Marsicorn up so that he can move it's head in time with his words.

"Oh please Simon," he says in a high-pitched voice. "It's me, your best friend the Marsicorn, and me and all my Marsicorn friends are sad and lonely at the mill. We want to be warm and safe with our pal the real Marsicorn, and we can all dance the night away."

He moves the little doll's front legs in a vague imitation of dancing, making off-key musical noises as he does so. Simon bites his knuckles to keep from laughing.

"Dash, no!" he says. "He'll go looney tunes, he'll be so mad..."

"I'll let you keep one," says Dash, and he knows he's won.

Simon borrows a couple of large canvas holdalls from the World o' Stuff and they make their way back to the mill. The Marsicorn is back inside his coat and Simon is asking Dash when he learned to crochet, and did he know that Eerie has a bi-weekly craft fair at the town hall, he could sell them, they're really cute, and did he steal the yarn because stealing is wrong and anyway, once people start buying the Marsicorns, he'll be able to purchase supplies legally and maybe make them in different colours and...

"I didn't make them!" says Dash hastily. "They just started appearing last night. You think if I could knit, I'd knit a dumb horned horse?"

"It's crochet," says Simon. "And there's nothing dumb or embarrassing about doing something you enjoy, Dash."

"Pfft," says Dash. "I'll enjoy seeing Teller's stupid face when he opens his stupid wardrobe to get his stupid Giants sweater and gets ambushed by unicorns."

"Marsicorns."

"Thank you for getting my name right, Simon," says Dash-as-the-Marsicorn. "You're a true friend."

"We shouldn't be doing this," says Simon, but Dash can barely understand him, they're both laughing so hard.

They get to the mill, and when Dash opens the door, the spreading pile of Marsicorns spills out over the doorstop and into the afternoon sunlight.

"Holy corn!" says Simon. "That's... that's a lot of Marsicorns, Dash."

"We're gonna need a bigger bag," says Dash.

In the end, they make a deal with Mister Radford to offer the Marsicorns for sale at the World o' Stuff in return for a cut of the profits. Simon negotiates a pretty sweet deal that allows him and Dash to keep full creative control over Marsicorns, Inc., with the World o' Stuff selling the "basic" models and Simon manning a stall at the Eerie Craft Fair offering customised versions for a slightly higher fee.

Dash eventually does learn to crochet, because Syndi absolutely wants a rainbow and not a dumb key as her Marsicorn's cutie mark, and Simon is busy making tiny leather jackets for a two-dozen-strong order than just came in from the Unkind Ones. The rainbow turns out a little crooked, but Syndi declares that a wonky cutie mark goes perfectly with the Marsicorns unique combination of adorable stuffed animal with a furious expression, pays him, and walks off with her new doll peeking out of her backpack.

Marshall suffers through no less than seventeen different Marsicorn ambushes, finding them in his cereal, in his Sky Monsters, in the shower, balanced on the curtain rail in his bedroom, and once, spring-loaded into a brown-wrapped package that burst open and showered him with Marsicorns after Melanie Monroe heard what was going on and gave her input.

Dash still shows up on full moon nights, and when he's feeling especially difficult, will sometimes threaten to pick the padlock on the Evidence Locker, remove all the painstakingly catalogued exhibits, and replace them with Marsicorns bearing identical labels. He knows he won't do it, and by this point Mars pretty much knows it too, but every time, he goes out and buys another lock, and they pretend that Dash doesn't still have that very first Marsicorn still tucked away in his coat pocket, a little battered and more dirty from all the adventures it's been on since the day it first showed up in Eerie.


End file.
